Great post Ted—and lots of good comments here. I'm a Juilliard School graduate. Between the ages of 12 and 25, I was laser-focused on a career as a classical musician—and devoted massive amounts of time and energy to putting myself in the best possible position to make that career happen. I did everything "right"—went to one of the best music schools in the world, studied with some of the greatest teachers in the world, and performed for a half-dozen summers in some of the world's most prestigious music festivals. NONE of that helped. What do I do today? I'm the communications director for the Pacific Crest Trail.
My point simply being that even when you do everything "right," it's likely you won't succeed in achieving your dreams—but that's okay. Like others here, I have a small-but-powerful little setup in my home with a DAW, some good monitors and an 88-key MIDI controller...and I've had a LOT of fun with that over the years. I'm a percussionist, so I've also had (for years) a rubber practice pad on a stand in front of a glass door looking out on my backyard...and I have spent countless hours happily drumming away on that rubber pad—for the sheer joy of rhythm, and throwing new "wrist twisters" at myself to learn.
I still hope someday to professionally record a dozen of the hundred-plus songs I have sitting on a hard drive. I still hope someday to perform again in front of an appreciative audience. But I don't think I've had a bad life because I didn't achieve my musical dreams. I'm grateful for the incredibly special time I had playing with one of the world's greatest orchestras (the Juilliard Orchestra).
There is a higher intelligence in the universe that sees the big picture and knows where each unique individual and their abilities are most needed by the world. I have seen people ruin their lives fighting it, and it's best just to flow with it and see where it takes you.
Ravi Shankar said: “But music is not for sale. The music that I have learned and want to give is like worshipping God. It's absolutely like a prayer.” Okay. I'm 66. But I'm still going. I'm caring for my disabled husband (who's a composer, who makes no money), I'm retiring from my day job in 8 weeks, I have two adult kids who still need my help, I'm carrying the whole family, BUT I believe that there is a place in this world for my music. Which I get up every morning at 5 AM to write. There's only one answer to this question: keep on going!!! Never, never stop!
Folks would listen to me jam at home and ask me if I was professional. Lived in some nice pads in Venice and Malibu with a room full of nice instruments. I'd laugh and say I'm better than professional. When you hear me playing it's because I want to, not because I have to be on stage for a gig at X hours and play for Y minutes to earn a paycheck. If I'm not in the mood I don't play. And sometimes the magic doesn't happen, the rare day when I can't fall into the zone of effortless mastery and pure joy, and I walk away. Unhappy, but I say no reason to force things, the zone will be there the next time.
You pointed out another major point that most folks just don't understand.
Back in the 1960s my goal was to be a film composer which I pursued relentlessly, even at one point winning a Downbeat Magazine scholarship to the Eastman arrangers summer program where I won the Duke Ellington award to return again the following year. After college as a composition major and a 5 year stint in the Air Force as a pilot to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War, I moved to LA to attend UCLA as a grad student in composition. I knew I didn't want the degree which would probably lead to a teaching job but wanted to use the proximity to the vibrant LA music scene to hone my craft and get work while studying. After a year and much frustration, a friend said: "Richard, remember it's the music business. There's the music and there's the business. Don't confuse them." The aha that gave me was profound as I now understood why there were musicians far better than I who were starving and musicians who were much less talented, sometimes embarrassingly so, who were making serious money. I came from a middle class worker-bee home. We were not entrepreneurs and I had no experience in self-employment or the marketing and relationship building to create a successful music career. Realizing this put everything into perspective and I eventually moved on to a successful non-music career as a Clinical Social Worker and psychotherapist, but I also continued to play piano and write for enjoyment and sometimes for hire. Not having to try and wring a living out of music freed me in a sense to look at other options and resulted in increasing my pure enjoyment of music.
Thank you for your story, Richard. Btw, did you become a social worker in LA, as I did? I never set my sights on a music career, which my parents never would have supported, but I did have a job as a dancer in a bar in NOLA, lol. I always wanted to be a writer, and now, at long last, I am working on a book, which will probably never be published, for similar reasons as musicians can't get work in our current economy. Who knows how it will all shake out? But the love of doing what brings you joy is the most important thing, as Ted so wisely states.
I have met Philip Glass a couple of times, and he is a super nice guy. The issue here is not about Philip Glass, it’s about who gets to be an artist. Very late in my life I have finally realized (thank god before it was too late), I get to choose myself. That’s huge!
If you substitute writer, every single one of these 8 pieces of advice are absolutely right-on, and I can see so clearly that because I followed this advice throughout my life (wanting to be published author of historical fiction at age 12, telling stories and writing in my day job as a history professor, staying connected through a writers group for 30 years) I achieved that life I wanted at age 60, and have had more success in the past 13 years as a writer than I ever thought possible. I hope all the young aspiring creatives will take that advice and have and find a similar life of joy and satisfaction.
Good one Ted. I’m 66 and still love practicing every day. I love it more than when I was younger. I’ve made a living in New Orleans playing music for over 30 years. An additional piece of advice might be go where the music is. I remember a Joe Pass interview years ago wherein he said when someone asked if they should move to LA to pursue music and he said “if you have gigs where u are ,stay there” something like that. I feel in love with New Orleans music and came here thinking even if I don’t make money and wind up homeless I’ll be around my heroes and other great musicians. Allen Toussaint,Fats Domino,Earl King etc. Not only was I able to make a living all these years but wound up playing with many of my heroes over the years. It’s a cliché of course but follow your heart and love the music. If u want it bad enough you’ll figure it out.
That may still be good advice. There was a high school student, the son of some friends, whom we tutored. He didn't think much of Conard's Lord Jim. He was musically talented and wanted a musical career. He used to hang around the local musical instrument store and was serious about music and the music business. His parents insisted he have backup plan, so he interned at the prosecutor's office and took some related courses. He studied music in college, but then got carpal tunnel syndrome when he took up piano, so everything went off track. It changed, but didn't derail his musical career. He's working in Nashville, doing music, working with musicians, making his living in the music business. There are other music towns as well, so the idea of going where the music is makes sense from both an artistic point of view, but also from a business point of view.
We actually finished it together. It was a deep wade, and Conrad liked to play narrator games. Conrad was also skewering a particular take on the world, and I don't think our young friend suffered from those illusions. He was always mature for his age and comfortable around adults, probably from hanging out with musicians at the local music store. We got the impression he learned a lot more about music and life than just a bunch of chords there.
I am not a musician, but my son is. He’s currently enrolled in a Songwriting program at a university in Nashville. My older son is a writer; another creative profession. I was an electrical engineer (not a very creative endeavor, but a stable paycheck), so I can’t really relate to the struggles my sons face. Your suggestions were really valuable and I forwarded your piece to them for moral support. I know my Nashville son faces rejection on almost a daily basis; he never complains about it, but just keeps moving forward. I hope he never gives up his dream... Thank you for your words of wisdom!
I'm about to make a debut of sorts playing in public. Thing is I'm 55! I've been playing for almost 20 years where folks in Los Angeles have been telling me I play lead guitar as well as anyone out there. I played piano concertos and didn't really immerse myself in guitar until I had a lot of free time after finishing my medical residency. Surrounded by pros who made the big time when I was in NYC for school.
After I shed the classical training box, where you don't improvise and aim to improve what you're playing AS WRITTEN in the score, I bought a grand piano. Drilled for hours, playing some classical. Could not improvise on piano the way I could on guitar, glimpses but then always that classical box returning in a way. But I moved to a new place four years ago and didn't want to disturb the neighbors wailing on the electric. Spent a lot more time on the piano and lo and behold I'm starting to tickle the ivories like nobody's business.
But I always played for my own joy while friends were begging me to share it with the world. I'd try to explain my profound issues with stage fright and say one of these days . . . I always hated speaking to a room full of doctors or having the spotlight on me. Not as an athlete, I was rather good at multiple sports. But I hated standing up in front of the entire school during weekly assemblies to announce our team's results, a duty that fell to the captains which I was in several sports.
It's never too late. And absolutely agree, and this is something a huge fraction of humanity just doesn't get on some level- the better you get at something the more the fun grows. I've been told numerous times when offering to give someone pointers and instantly improve their "game" that they're fine, they're having fun being absolutely terrible. (Skiing, I trained for years with a HOF ski coach Bad Bob Salerno, and tennis where I was nationally ranked in a previous lifetime 40 years ago).
I was Bipolar for 40 years then I got better into a sick world. Then I became ill again and had tens of thousands of pounds taken from me by deception! I could have retained 90% of this. But the deal was compromised and I 'd rather give it all away than an inch. But here’s the thing, It was the right thing to do. I have no resentment only love in my heart. I am also the only man in the world playing a guitar technique of my own design. I am on the mend again from 6 months of solicitors and anxieties. But if you can knock down Bipolar and anxieties and still have the love of music in your soul it's a win win. One ❤️
But for all the, at times, exhausting and depressing, day jobs I had, I wouldn't have my own little recording studio in my own house where I can choose from any number of guitars and keyboards to make music with. I'm retired now, not because I made a lot of money in music- I never did. But that never made me want to stop writing another song. The only times I ever wanted to give up was when I either listened to a gate keeper who told me all the things I was doing wrong, or compared myself to some artist who was much more "successful" than I. I had to stop doing that.
Since the first of the year I've written a collection of 10 new instrumentals and they will be out on all the usual streaming services in June. It's hard to describe how satisfying that is. I don't make but pennies from all the songs I have put out there over the years. But I tickles me no end when see some person I will never meet or know, somewhere halfway around the world has streamed one of my songs. Perhaps it made them smile a little. I know I did.
It took me a long time to realize that in the most important way I have always been doing exactly what I wanted to do- being a musician who makes music. For that I am very grateful.
I've been a musician all my life, and I've worked all my life. I've never been able to do one without the other. I manage construction projects. I have a family, and a home. I also have musician friends that I cherish that have magnificent souls, voices, and talent. But just a couple of nights ago, I couldn't sleep... so at 4:00 am went to the music room above the garage, and picked up a guitar, and started finger picking, quietly, in order to not wake anyone, and in just a few minutes, it arrived. A song. It was a little walking blues thing, simple... as art, insignificant, but it was also good. It was just a little drop from that big river.
So, is there and actual muse? Maybe. I can't truly say. Could be just an overactive imagination, or the residue of a dream. But for musicians, there are moments where it feels like there is, and it's possible to be touched by it, to speak to it and through it. My experience is that songs arrive, more than are made. Something comes to us out of a deeper place than we normally access, and blesses us with a richer experience of life itself.
You can't put a price on that, and it will continue to emerge through the lives of musicians no matter what. It's not a way to make a living... but a way to live. So I feel blessed to live in multiple "worlds" and have music running through all of them. So, to all that are up in the night, opening yourself to whatever comes, you're not alone, and you're doing something vital, even if the only beneficiary is you. You belong to, and are part of a world that was just made better for having more music in it.
Ted, finally signing on, at least for a while. This piece is so spot-on. I'm older than you, spent a lot of my life in a music-related vocation, with substantial rewards, and now focus on my horn. It's very slow out here -- SF Bay area -- but I have a few students and get the occasional performance gig. Each day I want to play better. What, as you say, a gift that is. Have to acknowledge blessings. Cheers, man, thanks. And great Duke piece, too.
Great post Ted—and lots of good comments here. I'm a Juilliard School graduate. Between the ages of 12 and 25, I was laser-focused on a career as a classical musician—and devoted massive amounts of time and energy to putting myself in the best possible position to make that career happen. I did everything "right"—went to one of the best music schools in the world, studied with some of the greatest teachers in the world, and performed for a half-dozen summers in some of the world's most prestigious music festivals. NONE of that helped. What do I do today? I'm the communications director for the Pacific Crest Trail.
My point simply being that even when you do everything "right," it's likely you won't succeed in achieving your dreams—but that's okay. Like others here, I have a small-but-powerful little setup in my home with a DAW, some good monitors and an 88-key MIDI controller...and I've had a LOT of fun with that over the years. I'm a percussionist, so I've also had (for years) a rubber practice pad on a stand in front of a glass door looking out on my backyard...and I have spent countless hours happily drumming away on that rubber pad—for the sheer joy of rhythm, and throwing new "wrist twisters" at myself to learn.
I still hope someday to professionally record a dozen of the hundred-plus songs I have sitting on a hard drive. I still hope someday to perform again in front of an appreciative audience. But I don't think I've had a bad life because I didn't achieve my musical dreams. I'm grateful for the incredibly special time I had playing with one of the world's greatest orchestras (the Juilliard Orchestra).
There is a higher intelligence in the universe that sees the big picture and knows where each unique individual and their abilities are most needed by the world. I have seen people ruin their lives fighting it, and it's best just to flow with it and see where it takes you.
Ravi Shankar said: “But music is not for sale. The music that I have learned and want to give is like worshipping God. It's absolutely like a prayer.” Okay. I'm 66. But I'm still going. I'm caring for my disabled husband (who's a composer, who makes no money), I'm retiring from my day job in 8 weeks, I have two adult kids who still need my help, I'm carrying the whole family, BUT I believe that there is a place in this world for my music. Which I get up every morning at 5 AM to write. There's only one answer to this question: keep on going!!! Never, never stop!
Every moment is a miracle
Thanks for the inspiration! You may have pushed me into completing my latest song, and starting the accompanying video this morning. I needed that!
Yay!!!
I think people underrated how nice it is to be a musician with a day job. You can focus on your art without the financial pressures.
Folks would listen to me jam at home and ask me if I was professional. Lived in some nice pads in Venice and Malibu with a room full of nice instruments. I'd laugh and say I'm better than professional. When you hear me playing it's because I want to, not because I have to be on stage for a gig at X hours and play for Y minutes to earn a paycheck. If I'm not in the mood I don't play. And sometimes the magic doesn't happen, the rare day when I can't fall into the zone of effortless mastery and pure joy, and I walk away. Unhappy, but I say no reason to force things, the zone will be there the next time.
You pointed out another major point that most folks just don't understand.
As Robert Fripp says: the concern of the musician is music. The concern of the professional musician is business.
Back in the 1960s my goal was to be a film composer which I pursued relentlessly, even at one point winning a Downbeat Magazine scholarship to the Eastman arrangers summer program where I won the Duke Ellington award to return again the following year. After college as a composition major and a 5 year stint in the Air Force as a pilot to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War, I moved to LA to attend UCLA as a grad student in composition. I knew I didn't want the degree which would probably lead to a teaching job but wanted to use the proximity to the vibrant LA music scene to hone my craft and get work while studying. After a year and much frustration, a friend said: "Richard, remember it's the music business. There's the music and there's the business. Don't confuse them." The aha that gave me was profound as I now understood why there were musicians far better than I who were starving and musicians who were much less talented, sometimes embarrassingly so, who were making serious money. I came from a middle class worker-bee home. We were not entrepreneurs and I had no experience in self-employment or the marketing and relationship building to create a successful music career. Realizing this put everything into perspective and I eventually moved on to a successful non-music career as a Clinical Social Worker and psychotherapist, but I also continued to play piano and write for enjoyment and sometimes for hire. Not having to try and wring a living out of music freed me in a sense to look at other options and resulted in increasing my pure enjoyment of music.
Thank you for your story, Richard. Btw, did you become a social worker in LA, as I did? I never set my sights on a music career, which my parents never would have supported, but I did have a job as a dancer in a bar in NOLA, lol. I always wanted to be a writer, and now, at long last, I am working on a book, which will probably never be published, for similar reasons as musicians can't get work in our current economy. Who knows how it will all shake out? But the love of doing what brings you joy is the most important thing, as Ted so wisely states.
Quick list of some artists who had day gigs for much/all of their adult life:
T.S. Eliot was a banker.
Charles Ives was an insurance executive.
Phillip Glass: plumber.
Toni Morrison: editor.
Herman Melville: customs inspector.
Vivian Maier: nanny.
I love writing music, doing my Substack, and putting things in boxes as an archivist by day. :)
Wallace Stevens was also an insurance executive!
I thought Philip Glass was a taxi driver, and only until 40...
I have met Philip Glass a couple of times, and he is a super nice guy. The issue here is not about Philip Glass, it’s about who gets to be an artist. Very late in my life I have finally realized (thank god before it was too late), I get to choose myself. That’s huge!
Never give up
He might have been! I think he had a whole bunch of odd jobs until his 40s like you say.
Denny Zeitlin - psychiatrist
If you substitute writer, every single one of these 8 pieces of advice are absolutely right-on, and I can see so clearly that because I followed this advice throughout my life (wanting to be published author of historical fiction at age 12, telling stories and writing in my day job as a history professor, staying connected through a writers group for 30 years) I achieved that life I wanted at age 60, and have had more success in the past 13 years as a writer than I ever thought possible. I hope all the young aspiring creatives will take that advice and have and find a similar life of joy and satisfaction.
Good one Ted. I’m 66 and still love practicing every day. I love it more than when I was younger. I’ve made a living in New Orleans playing music for over 30 years. An additional piece of advice might be go where the music is. I remember a Joe Pass interview years ago wherein he said when someone asked if they should move to LA to pursue music and he said “if you have gigs where u are ,stay there” something like that. I feel in love with New Orleans music and came here thinking even if I don’t make money and wind up homeless I’ll be around my heroes and other great musicians. Allen Toussaint,Fats Domino,Earl King etc. Not only was I able to make a living all these years but wound up playing with many of my heroes over the years. It’s a cliché of course but follow your heart and love the music. If u want it bad enough you’ll figure it out.
That may still be good advice. There was a high school student, the son of some friends, whom we tutored. He didn't think much of Conard's Lord Jim. He was musically talented and wanted a musical career. He used to hang around the local musical instrument store and was serious about music and the music business. His parents insisted he have backup plan, so he interned at the prosecutor's office and took some related courses. He studied music in college, but then got carpal tunnel syndrome when he took up piano, so everything went off track. It changed, but didn't derail his musical career. He's working in Nashville, doing music, working with musicians, making his living in the music business. There are other music towns as well, so the idea of going where the music is makes sense from both an artistic point of view, but also from a business point of view.
Lord Jim is not an easy read. Good, but one could be forgiven for not finishing it
We actually finished it together. It was a deep wade, and Conrad liked to play narrator games. Conrad was also skewering a particular take on the world, and I don't think our young friend suffered from those illusions. He was always mature for his age and comfortable around adults, probably from hanging out with musicians at the local music store. We got the impression he learned a lot more about music and life than just a bunch of chords there.
Sounds like music
I am not a musician, but my son is. He’s currently enrolled in a Songwriting program at a university in Nashville. My older son is a writer; another creative profession. I was an electrical engineer (not a very creative endeavor, but a stable paycheck), so I can’t really relate to the struggles my sons face. Your suggestions were really valuable and I forwarded your piece to them for moral support. I know my Nashville son faces rejection on almost a daily basis; he never complains about it, but just keeps moving forward. I hope he never gives up his dream... Thank you for your words of wisdom!
I'm about to make a debut of sorts playing in public. Thing is I'm 55! I've been playing for almost 20 years where folks in Los Angeles have been telling me I play lead guitar as well as anyone out there. I played piano concertos and didn't really immerse myself in guitar until I had a lot of free time after finishing my medical residency. Surrounded by pros who made the big time when I was in NYC for school.
After I shed the classical training box, where you don't improvise and aim to improve what you're playing AS WRITTEN in the score, I bought a grand piano. Drilled for hours, playing some classical. Could not improvise on piano the way I could on guitar, glimpses but then always that classical box returning in a way. But I moved to a new place four years ago and didn't want to disturb the neighbors wailing on the electric. Spent a lot more time on the piano and lo and behold I'm starting to tickle the ivories like nobody's business.
But I always played for my own joy while friends were begging me to share it with the world. I'd try to explain my profound issues with stage fright and say one of these days . . . I always hated speaking to a room full of doctors or having the spotlight on me. Not as an athlete, I was rather good at multiple sports. But I hated standing up in front of the entire school during weekly assemblies to announce our team's results, a duty that fell to the captains which I was in several sports.
It's never too late. And absolutely agree, and this is something a huge fraction of humanity just doesn't get on some level- the better you get at something the more the fun grows. I've been told numerous times when offering to give someone pointers and instantly improve their "game" that they're fine, they're having fun being absolutely terrible. (Skiing, I trained for years with a HOF ski coach Bad Bob Salerno, and tennis where I was nationally ranked in a previous lifetime 40 years ago).
I was Bipolar for 40 years then I got better into a sick world. Then I became ill again and had tens of thousands of pounds taken from me by deception! I could have retained 90% of this. But the deal was compromised and I 'd rather give it all away than an inch. But here’s the thing, It was the right thing to do. I have no resentment only love in my heart. I am also the only man in the world playing a guitar technique of my own design. I am on the mend again from 6 months of solicitors and anxieties. But if you can knock down Bipolar and anxieties and still have the love of music in your soul it's a win win. One ❤️
But for all the, at times, exhausting and depressing, day jobs I had, I wouldn't have my own little recording studio in my own house where I can choose from any number of guitars and keyboards to make music with. I'm retired now, not because I made a lot of money in music- I never did. But that never made me want to stop writing another song. The only times I ever wanted to give up was when I either listened to a gate keeper who told me all the things I was doing wrong, or compared myself to some artist who was much more "successful" than I. I had to stop doing that.
Since the first of the year I've written a collection of 10 new instrumentals and they will be out on all the usual streaming services in June. It's hard to describe how satisfying that is. I don't make but pennies from all the songs I have put out there over the years. But I tickles me no end when see some person I will never meet or know, somewhere halfway around the world has streamed one of my songs. Perhaps it made them smile a little. I know I did.
It took me a long time to realize that in the most important way I have always been doing exactly what I wanted to do- being a musician who makes music. For that I am very grateful.
This made me tear up. I dont know why ( i am not a musician , i dont play a musical instrument). It just did. Thank you.
I've been a musician all my life, and I've worked all my life. I've never been able to do one without the other. I manage construction projects. I have a family, and a home. I also have musician friends that I cherish that have magnificent souls, voices, and talent. But just a couple of nights ago, I couldn't sleep... so at 4:00 am went to the music room above the garage, and picked up a guitar, and started finger picking, quietly, in order to not wake anyone, and in just a few minutes, it arrived. A song. It was a little walking blues thing, simple... as art, insignificant, but it was also good. It was just a little drop from that big river.
So, is there and actual muse? Maybe. I can't truly say. Could be just an overactive imagination, or the residue of a dream. But for musicians, there are moments where it feels like there is, and it's possible to be touched by it, to speak to it and through it. My experience is that songs arrive, more than are made. Something comes to us out of a deeper place than we normally access, and blesses us with a richer experience of life itself.
You can't put a price on that, and it will continue to emerge through the lives of musicians no matter what. It's not a way to make a living... but a way to live. So I feel blessed to live in multiple "worlds" and have music running through all of them. So, to all that are up in the night, opening yourself to whatever comes, you're not alone, and you're doing something vital, even if the only beneficiary is you. You belong to, and are part of a world that was just made better for having more music in it.
Thank you for a great story. Not everyone gets something like that from the muses. It can be a wonderful, joyous, overwhelming experience.
"It's not a way to make a living...but a way to live" Beautifully said! That resonates.
Ted, finally signing on, at least for a while. This piece is so spot-on. I'm older than you, spent a lot of my life in a music-related vocation, with substantial rewards, and now focus on my horn. It's very slow out here -- SF Bay area -- but I have a few students and get the occasional performance gig. Each day I want to play better. What, as you say, a gift that is. Have to acknowledge blessings. Cheers, man, thanks. And great Duke piece, too.
Beautiful post - thank you.
Thanks Ted, it's difficult when you're just starting out and finding your audience
I'm pretty much doing all of these, but I think the most important of all is - "Focus on the intrinsic joy of making music." Thanks Ted. You Rock!